The 1990s was marked by changes in the Brazilian economy, among them the revival of trade liberalization and productivity growth. Many theories and empirical studies show the impact of foreign trade on productivity and economic growth, but there is no consensus on those issues. This paper aims at examining the relationship between the volume of imports and labor productivity of Brazilian manufacturing industry, by using quarterly data for the variables and the vector autoregressive model. The results indicate that the growth of imports positively influences productivity.
Imports; productivity; manufacturing industry; vector autoregressive model
